The Imperial Hypocrisy Of Demonising RT

Western elites and media are now condemning the Kremlin for retaliatory measures against western funded media in Russia, after the US forced RT to register as a ‘foreign agent’, yet these elites and media kept silent about, or even supported, the attacks on RT.

The outlets being targeted by Russia, such as Voice Of America, are proven to propagate for US interests, in Latin America, for example.

It is such grotesque, imperial arrogance and hypocrisy, that they manage to twist a retaliatory measure by the Kremlin into an attack on ‘press freedoms’ in Russia, and that they stay silent about the long history of disinformation by western and corporate funded media outlets to foment support for coups and regime change in target countries, (often with the aim of installing a far worse regime).

When Trump slams the war-propagating corporate media, (albeit generally for partisan reasons), ‘liberals’ go berserk about attacks on press freedoms. But when it comes to international or alternative media being attacked - nothing.

Are we on a slippery slope? Eventually, are all perspectives from Pentagon-designated ‘enemy’ countries to be silenced? Are western citizens to be fed a monotonous stream of Pentagon and corporate propaganda, so that consent, for war etc, remains easy to manufacture?

The fact is, the Russian perspective is not represented remotely fairly in western corporate media (ditto other ‘enemy’ nations), so unless we do want to just stay in a bubble of Pentagon and corporate propaganda; unless we do want to allow the US to continue getting away with murder; to continue encircling Russia and China with military bases thus increasing the likelihood of a global calamity, we should all be standing up for RT, and speaking out against censorship. If we don’t, I fear for the future.

The US is considered to be, by far, the greatest threat to world peace (Gallup poll 2013). All those unfortunate enough to have been born into ‘enemy’ countries, need us to stand up for them - that is what RT does, often by employing journalists who, as per Noam Chomsky’s theory, have been pushed out of mainstream outlets for not towing the party line; a line which so often happens to match up with that of the Pentagon/State Department.

The US have been, and still are, bombing, destabilising, and invading countries around the world. This has been the way of things since World War 2 and, since the fall of the Soviet Union, nothing has stood in their way. There has been no counterbalance to the US, unipolar, neoliberal world order. A re-assertive Russia (with backing from China and others) now offer this counter, and until they show signs of imperial actively, (rather than defensive, as in Ukraine and Syria), I will trust Putin when he says that he simply desires a fair, multi-polar world. (NB. this does not mean that I love Putin!).

Whatever happens in the future, remember - America, not Russia, created these new tensions between the two countries, as there is little evidence of ‘Kremlin meddling’ in the 2016 US election, or of RT being untruthful, (at least, in comparison to western corporate media!).